Treating ESL Writing Errors: Balancing Form and Content · · 2015-11-19Treating ESL Writing...

Treating ESL Writing Errors:

Balancing Form and Content

María Cristina Giraldo de Londoñ[email protected]

Ronald Alan [email protected]

Universidad Tecnológica de Pereira

The general acceptance of Communicative Language Teaching has generated confusion withrespect to the role of writing in the ESL curriculum, the usefulness of ESL writing error treatment, andthe form that treatment should take. An imaginary conflict between the goals of encouraging students’communicative use of L2 and that of promoting formal correctness often discourages ESL teachersfrom dealing with writing errors that may be easily treatable during early stages of learning but which,left untreated, continue to affect students’ performance at much higher academic levels. By carefulapplication of appropriate techniques, teachers can provide error treatment while promoting habits ofself monitoring, revision, and autonomy.

Key words: Error treatment, communicative language teaching (CLT), form-focused instruction

La aceptación generalizada del concepto de la enseñanza comunicativa de los idiomas ha generadoconfusión con respecto al papel de la escritura en el programa de un curso, la utilidad de la corrección deerrores de escritura y la forma como esta se debe realizar. A menudo, el conflicto imaginario entre lasmetas de animar a los alumnos en el uso comunicativo de la segunda lengua y el fomento del manejocorrecto de la misma en cuanto a los aspectos formales, desanima a los docentes para tratar errores quepueden ser fácilmente corregibles durante las fases iniciales del proceso aprendizaje. Si estos no secorrigen, siguen afectando el desempeño de los alumnos en niveles académicos mucho más altos.Mediante la aplicación cuidadosa de técnicas apropiadas, los docentes pueden proporcionar corrección,mientras fomentan hábitos de auto-monitoreo, revisión y autonomía.

Palabras clave: Teoría de errores, enseñanza comunicativa de las lenguas, enseñanza enfocada en laforma

HOW 15, 2008, ISSN 0120-5927. Bogotá, Colombia. Pages: 107-123 107

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Introduction

ESL writing is frustrating for students to produce and tedious for teachers tocorrect. Even learners whose oral skills are of a high order typically struggle toexpress themselves and avoid embarrassing mistakes when writing in English.Teachers, for their part, apply a wide diversity of strategies for dealing with ESLwriting errors, more often relying on improvisation and habit rather than onconscious application of theory.

A few decades ago ESL teachers might presume, as did Kenneth Chastain inDeveloping Second Language Skills: Theory to Practice, that “students do not have to acquireas high a level of proficiency in speaking and writing as they do in listeningcomprehension and reading to be able to function in the language” (1976, p. 365).Such a presumption no longer holds in today’s world of information technology, inwhich e-mail messages are almost as instantaneous as telephone calls and barriers ofdistance, nationality and cultural practically non-existent. Today’s professionals, ofwhatever socio-cultural background, face, on a daily basis, diverse tasks that requireformal writing in English.

Nevertheless, it is tempting for ESL teachers to neglect the skills associated withformal writing. The currently fashionable communicative approach to ESL is easilyinterpreted as prioritizing oral over written production and content over formalcorrectness. Given the torturous process involved in bringing learners to basic levelsof communicative competence, ESL teachers can perhaps be excused for placingformal writing – a problematic skill even for native speakers – low on the list ofpriorities. The time required for students to produce, and teachers to respond to,such writing is in itself a formidable impediment to its inclusion in the curriculum.Then there is the matter of error treatment. Should writing errors be treated at all? Ifso, which kinds? How should they be treated?

Concepts of Writing in Language Acquisition Theory

“Language is speech”, claims Leonard Bloomfield (1933). “Writing is notlanguage, but merely a way of recording language by means of visible marks…”Bloomfield’s writings formed an important theoretical underpinning of theaudio-lingual method that dominated foreign language teaching from the 1940’s tothe late 1960’s. Writing was seen as, at best, a support for oral language skills and, atworst, a source of needless confusion to beginning learners still struggling with the

108 HOW, A Colombian Journal for Teachers of English

María Cristina Giraldo de Londoñoand Roland Alan Perry


acquisition of L2 phonemes and syntax. Audio-lingual methodology deferred writingpractice to advanced stages of the L2 acquisition process, introducing it cautiouslythrough controlled activities like copying, dictation, word substitution, and sentencetransformation.

A propensity to view writing as merely a support for language learning outlastedthe popularity of audio-lingualism. As late as 1983 Ann Raimes, in her bookTechniques in Teaching Writing, justified the teaching of writing in terms of reinforcinggrammatical structures (as cited in Reid, 1993, p. 27). Meanwhile, research on ESLwriting remained limited in scope, often adopting paradigms associated with researchin L1 writing.

In recent decades, writing has been recognized as a manifestation of languagepossessing its own distinctive features. As David Crystal (1987, p. 181) notes, writingallows for the transmission of messages to unlimited numbers of recipients; it isnon-interactive (i.e. does not allow for negotiation of meaning); and it is relativelypermanent (affording writers the possibility of changing and revising and readers thepossibility for close reading, reflection, and re-reading). These features, affirmsCrystal, combine to produce the carefully structured, compact, and intricate style ofcommunication that characterizes writing.

CLT, which supplanted Audiolingualism during the late 1970’s, retained thetraditional view of writing as a secondary skill. However, it emphatically rejectedAudiolingualism’s insistence on strict control of learner language. WhereasAudiolingualism was quite willing to limit learners’ freedom to use languageexpressively in order to limit opportunities for error, CLT viewed error as a normal,positive aspect of a continuous process by means of which learners use L2expressively from the very beginning while gradually constructing linguistic modelsthat approximate ever more closely the L2 of native speakers. Such a viewencouraged interest in students’ writing processes. As “process writing” came intovogue, researchers examined students’ composing, revising and correcting processes.Nancy Arapoff, Mary Lawrence, and Vivian Zamel were among those who, duringthe 1970’s and early 80’s, pioneered this trend (Reid, 1993, p. 319).

Concepts of Error

Communicative Language Teaching brought about radical changes with respectto concepts of error. Whereas audiolingualism sought to deny students even thepossibility of committing errors, and cautioned teachers to zealously correct errors


Treating ESL Writing Errors:Balancing Form and Content


wherever they occurred, CLT saw error as normal, and even desirable, and questionedthe practice of error correction (Gray, 2004; Truscott, 1999). Nevertheless, as CLTmatured, error’s socio-affective aspects and the relative merits of different errortreatment strategies began to attract the interest of researchers. Khalil (1985) and Vanet al. (1984) studied error-gravity, viewed in terms of the “irritation” or “acceptancelevels” of native speakers with regard to specific errors (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 66),while J. Hendrickson (1980, as cited in Mahili, 1994) examined the conditions inwhich error treatment might be carried out most effectively.

The efficacy of error treatment continues to be a hotly argued topic amongTESOL researchers. Truscott (1999) says bluntly that “…in general, correctionshould be considered a bad idea”. Such criticisms are urged with special force withrespect to ESL writing, and most particularly with regard to techniques in whichteachers painstakingly mark and comment on all student errors (Gray, 2004;Mantello, 1997; Truscott, 1999). On the other hand, Lyster, Lightbown and Spada(1999), Mantello (1997), and Porte (1993), maintain that it can have some impact onESL writing attitudes and performance if carried out in a selective, systematic andlearner-participative way. In a study by Giraldo and Perry (2005) students wereobserved, after only two awareness-raising error treatment workshops,conspicuously drawing periods at the ends of sentences and placing third personplural –s markers – often to the point of overcorrecting.

Ellis (1994, p. 205) defines error as “a noticeable deviation from the adultgrammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner”.He distinguishes errors from mistakes. Errors represent misconceptions, lack ofinformation and/or lack of competence regarding certain aspects of the target language.Their correction usually requires teacher intervention. Mistakes, on the other hand,are incorrect language forms which result when learners forget or misapply rules theyknow. According to Brown (2000, p. 217), they would be able to correct theirmistakes given the opportunity. Mistakes are also referred to as performance errors(Allwright & Bailey, 1991, p 88).

Corder (1981, p. 10), who is generally credited with the error/mistake distinction,assumes that errors are governed by rules whereas mistakes are not. Errors are, heasserts, manifestations of interlanguage (i.e. learners’ imperfect mental constructions ofthe target language) and represent limitations of their L2 competence. Mistakes, on theother hand, are spontaneous events that cannot be explained by rules. Corder declaresthat “mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning” (1981, p. 10).




As Ellis (1994, p. 51) points out, Corder’s neat distinction between errors andmistakes ignores such complicating factors as the variability of learners’ competence.For example, a learner may know a linguistic feature only partially, or know it in onecontext but not in another. It might be more useful to distinguish mistakes fromerrors by envisioning a continuum with errors on one end and mistakes on the other.Thus, errors, in the strict sense as defined by Corder, would reflect language conceptsabout which the learner has no knowledge whatsoever or else has incorrect orincomplete knowledge. Moving along the continuum one would find incorrectproduction due to the learner’s having temporarily forgotten or confused L2concepts with which he/she is nominally familiar. Farther along would be foundincorrect utterances that the learner is able to self-correct upon reflection and/orexternal prompting (consciousness raising). Finally, at the far side – the mistake end –of the continuum would be the true slips of the tongue that the learner no sooner makesthan self-corrects. This suggests a uniform definition of errors/mistakes as beingincorrect utterances that occur when correct L2 concepts are unknown, unavailable,or unimportant to the learner at a given moment (though he/she may have, at onetime or another, been taught the relevant features of the target language).

Error and Interlanguage

Learners do not discard their native language in order to acquire another; rather,they construct an additional linguistic code alongside an existing one. Clearly, L1 andL2 acquisition are different (just how different is a major theoretical issue). Studentsnecessarily bring to second language learning existing sets of cognitive structures – aphenomenon known as transfer.

Transfer is classified by Brown (2000, p. 213) as inter-lingual or intra-lingualaccording to whether the learner transfers from L1 to L2 or else from one L2structure to another. Thus, a Spanish speaker who adds -s to English nouns in orderto indicate plurality is assumed to be applying inter-lingual transfer. However, whenadding the ending -ed to an unfamiliar English verb he/she is probably applyingintra-lingual transfer. Brown (2000, p. 94-95) further classifies transfer as positive ornegative according to whether it facilitates or hinders target language performance.Thus, the use, by a Spanish speaker, of -s to pluralize nouns or -ed to indicate pasttense of regular verbs would be positive transfer, whereas the error of adding -s toadjectives modifying plural nouns or -ed to irregular verbs to inflect for past tensewould be negative transfer. Negative inter-lingual transfer is alternately described as




interference. Negative intra-lingual transfer, that is to say, the inappropriate applicationof L2 paradigms, is called overgeneralization.

Transfer affects all aspects of language. Contrastive analysis, the comparative studyof L1 and L2 linguistic features, assumes that similarities between L1 and L2 willresult in positive transfer and ease of learning, while differences will result in negativetransfer (interference) and L2 errors. From the late 1940’s through the 1960’s,extensive research in contrastive analysis aimed at identifying points of similarity anddifference between native and target languages in order to predict areas of learnerdifficulty. An important corollary of contrastive analysis theory was that since errorsrepresent the intrusion of L1 habits into the L2 acquisition process, they must beavoided even at the cost of restricting language use. Linguists now consider L1interference to be less important than previously thought. Still, the fact that errors canbe analyzed in terms of learners’ conceptual models of the target language(interlanguage) has led to a surge of interest in error analysis. Brown (2000, p. 218)distinguishes error analysis (EA) from contrastive analysis (CA) in that it focuses onerrors arising from all possible sources, not just those attributable to L1.

Pedagogical practices may themselves give rise to errors. Teachers or textbooksmay give erroneous or misleading explanations, or learners may encounter L2concepts in contexts that suggest incorrect analogies. These are what Stenson (1974,as cited in Brown, 2000, p. 226) calls induced errors. Learners may also use incorrectforms in attempts to circumvent difficult L2 patterns, as when Spanish speakers use“The coat of John” in order to circumvent the more appropriate possessive form,“John’s coat”. When learners succeed in circumventing difficult L2 forms the result isnot error but rather the manifestation of a learner strategy called avoidance.

ESL teachers typically view students’ L1 in negative terms. According to Brown(2000, p. 95), “We often mistakenly overlook the facilitating effects of the nativelanguage in our penchant for analyzing errors in the second language and forover-stressing the interfering effects of the first language”. One who has devotedspecial attention to the positive role of L1 in second language acquisition is J.Cummins, whose hypothesis of common underlying language proficiency (CULP) (1983, ascited in Rivera, 1990) holds that the development of literacy and academic skills in L1is directly related to the development of these same skills in L2. This is to say, in theprocess of acquiring their native tongue, individuals develop non language-specificlinguistic skills and implicit meta-linguistic knowledge that transfer naturally to theacquisition of additional languages.




Error Gravity

Regardless of their causes, errors are significant chiefly with respect to how theyaffect others. Error gravity measures the degree to which different kinds of errorsinterfere with comprehension and/or provoke negative reactions on the part oflisteners or readers. Khalil (as cited in Ellis, 1994, p. 66) names three major criteria fordetermining error gravity: intelligibility, acceptability, and irritation. Intelligibility refersto how seriously errors interfere with comprehension, acceptability to recipients’judgments as to the relative seriousness of errors, and irritation to the emotionalresponses that errors provoke.

Error gravity is determined not only by the kind of error committed but also byits frequency, the circumstances in which it is committed, the identity of the onecommitting it, and the type of person(s) judging it. Studies such as that of RobertaVann and her colleagues (1984, as cited in Reid, 1993, p. 36) indicate that non-ESLacademics judge some kinds of errors as more serious than others, errors of wordorder being regarded as the most serious and spelling errors the least. According toEllis (1994, p. 66), natives tend to be more concerned with how errors affectcomprehension and non-natives with non-adherence to rules. Davies (as cited inEllis, 1994, p. 66) adds that non-native language teachers are influenced in theirjudgment of errors by considerations of syllabi and knowledge of students’ L1. Thus,they view transfer errors with tolerance, but have less patience with errors ingrammatical structures that students are supposed to have learned.

Writing errors tend to be judged more severely than similar errors occurring inspeech. For example, the speech of a visiting foreign professor, though it might bemarked by a thick German accent and curious turns of speech, will detract nothingfrom his academic prestige, whereas a thesis written by this same professor andcontaining misspelled words, uninflected verbs and inappropriate syntax, willprovoke disgust. Moreover, intelligibility as well as acceptability must be considered.Speech errors that might be compensated for by intonation, gestures, and othernon-verbal clues may seriously compromise the intelligibility of written discourse.For example, incorrect addition or omission of the third person singular -s can affectmeaning, given the phoneme’s parallel function as a pluralizing marker for nouns.Misplaced relative clauses can, likewise, result in ambiguity (“The Titanic struck aniceberg carrying 2000 passengers to New York”). The predominance of monosyllabiclexemes in English, and the fact that these monosyllables often do multiple service,may combine with careless punctuation to confuse meaning in ways that would be




less likely to occur in other languages. In her popular book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: AZero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss (2003) cites some amusingexamples of utterances that lend themselves to gross misinterpretation due toerroneous punctuation.1 It may be added that, if readers often miss writers’ intendedmeanings, so do the correction features of word processing programs.

Writing errors can lead to annoyance and misunderstanding in ways that speecherrors do not. In written discourse (much more than in speech) correct form matters.

What then, is correct form? Prescriptive definitions of error derive from thenotion of prescriptive grammar, which consists of formal rules of correctness prescribedby recognized authorities. Whereas cognitive descriptions of error focus on learners’inaccurate mental models of the target language and socio-linguistic descriptions onrecipients’ reactions to non-standard utterance, prescriptive descriptions speak oferrors in terms like “subject-verb agreement”, “missing copula”, “sentencefragment”, etc. In many languages, rules of usage are set by an official languageacademy. In the case of English, linguists and textbook writers determine acceptedusage in terms of those forms current among prestigious speakers and writers. Thus,the ever-popular, Harbrace College Handbook “attempts to describe the usual practice ofgood contemporary writers” and states that its rules “have authority only to theextent that they describe usage.” (Hodges & Whitten, 1972, p. X).

Prescriptive descriptions of error may be subdivided into such categories aspronunciation, mechanics (including spelling and punctuation), diction (dealing withquestions of lexis, register and appropriacy), grammar, cohesion, etc.

The existence of textbooks to guide native speakers in the correct use of theirmother tongues calls into question the definition of error as “a noticeable deviationfrom the adult grammar of a native speaker” (Brown, 2000, p. 217). One may ask,“Which native speaker(s)?” Implicit is the assumption that L1 speakers have perfectcommand of their native language and agree as to correct usage. However, a 2001study of Spanish students in Caqueta, Colombia, found that native Spanish speakersshowed serious difficulties with respect to such formal aspects as punctuation,tenses, textual references and connectors, (Quiroga, Jiménez, & Rojas, 2001, p. 147).The problematic nature of native speaker norms as standards of reference is wellillustrated by the use, in Colombian Spanish, of commas instead of periods to



1 The title refers to the text of a brochure about pandas. The text intends to say that the panda eats shoots andleaves, but the misplaced commas represent the animal as eating, firing a weapon, and walking away.


separate sentences within a paragraph, a frequent practice even among academicwriters. Does popular usage, or rather, the prescriptions of the Real AcademiaEspañola,2 represent correct Spanish? While learners transfer into English norms ofpunctuation they regard as correct in Spanish, ESL teachers assume the use of periodsand commas to be similar in both languages and so fail to recognize this as aninterference error.

Formal errors take on more – not less – importance as learners develop greaterL2 communicative competence. Precisely because they do not seriously impedecommunication, such errors may easily become fixed elements of learners’interlanguage, a phenomenon known as fossilization. Research indicates that “inmostly meaning-based instructional environments [learners] seem to reach a plateauin the formal accuracy of their language use while their communicative effectivenesscontinues to grow” (Lightbown & Spada, as cited in Gabrielatos, 1994).

Approaches to Error Treatment

The ponderous nature of writing – in contrast to the spontaneous nature ofspeech – makes the distinction between errors and mistakes especially problematical.What of students who turn in papers with features such as incorrect forms of to be,inverted adjective-noun word order and incomplete punctuation, even when theyhave been told their work will be graded and have been urged to proofread? Usuallythey will recall, with only slight prompting, having learned the correct forms. Ifmistakes are, as Corder (1981, p. 11) claims, fortuitous events having no rationalbasis, then it makes little sense to talk of strategies for dealing with them. However, ifthey are the result of cognitive, affective or circumstantial factors that impede themind’s access to L2 rules, then it should be possible to help learners to improve theirperformance by means of specific techniques aimed at reinforcing these rules.

Spoken errors – even if they go uncorrected – are ephemeral, whereas unmarkedwriting errors stand as tangible reminders of teachers’ failure to act. This fear ofleaving students in possession of unmarked written errors explains, no doubt, why somany ESL teachers weary themselves red-penning corrections they know willprobably not be read. Teachers, of course, employ other techniques such as



2 The Real Academia Española (1973, p. 148) prescribes the use of a periodo “cuando el periodo [sic] forma sentidocompleto, en términos de poderse pasar a otro nuevo sin quedar pendiente la comprensión de aquel”.


discussing general writing problems in class and conferring (“conferencing”)individually with students. Self and peer correction are sometimes combined with theuse of checklists or coded feedback. However, regardless of the techniquesemployed, they tend, according to Zamel (1985, as cited in Mantello, 1997, p. 88) “tobe random and arbitrary instead of being based on a clear and focused strategy”.

According to Allwright and Bailey (1991, p. 88-89), error treatment may take theform of error repair, which concerns the immediate rectification of specific utterancesin the interest of communication and/or linguistic correctness, or error cure, whichaims at helping the learner avoid the repetition of erroneous utterances and acquirecorrect forms.

A distinction is also made between local errors, which occur at the level of lexis orsyntax, and global errors, which involve more complex processes and occur at higherlevels of discourse. Whereas the former are easier to detect and repair, it is usually thelatter which more seriously interfere with communication.

In the 1967 movie Up the Down Staircase, a student writes a love letter to herEnglish teacher, who then calls the girl aside to coldly discuss the letter’s grammaticalerrors. Shortly afterward, the girl jumps from a window, dramatizing the cliché ofteachers’ obsessive focus on form and insensitivity to content. Robertson (1986, ascited in Simpson, 2003) advises teachers to react emotionally to students’ writing(“How exciting that must have been!”) or share like experiences (“That reminds meof when I…”). Such responses easily become silly or patronizing (“I agree! Yourgrandmother’s life support system ought to have been disconnected…”). ESLteachers, however humanistic their orientation, assign writing tasks not so much toelicit students’ feelings, experiences and opinions as to make them practice writing. Inany case, attempts to divorce form from content are problematical. Invitations andbusiness letters, for example, achieve their purpose as much by careful attention toform as by any information they may convey.

Concepts about the value of error correction reflect diverse theoreticalapproaches to second language acquisition. Krashen (1983, p. 30-38) describeslanguage acquisition as an unconscious process whereby the learner is exposed to,and comes to understand, comprehensible input (i.e. controlled samples of the language).In his view, conscious attempts to draw learners’ attention to formal aspects of thelanguage serve, at best, to improve students’ ability to monitor (self-correct) languagethey have essentially mastered, and, at worst, to raise the affective filter – a collection ofnegative feelings that blocks the spontaneous processes of acquisition. Languages




are, according to Krashen, learned by receiving and understanding messages, not byproducing them. Thus, error treatment is of little or no value in terms of languageacquisition.

Communicative language teaching grudgingly accepts the validity of errortreatment but takes a critical view of it. Chastain (1976, p. 365) writes, “…althoughcorrect speech is the goal, the native speaker can fill in the gaps and comprehend themessage if there are not too many errors. A point of incomprehensibility does, ofcourse, exist. …the goal in the productive skills is not native speech but the ability tocommunicate with native speakers.” CLT tends to equate error treatment withdiscredited “traditional” methodologies. Writers like Truscott (1999) claim that errortreatment is non-communicative, since it distracts attention from writers’ messages,and useless, since research shows it to be ineffective.

Error Treatment Strategies

TESOL literature has been especially critical of comprehensive error treatmenttechniques, in which all errors are painstakingly highlighted and the correct formsprovided. Leki (1991, as cited in Mantello, 1997, p. 204) states categorically that,“marking errors on students’ papers does not help them improve their writing noreliminate their errors”. However, a rich diversity of error-treatment strategies exists.The most promising ones incorporate concepts of form-focused instruction andconsciousness-raising.

Form-Focused Instruction (FFI)

It is defined by Spada (1997, as cited in Brown, 2000, p. 233) as “any pedagogicaleffort which is used to draw the learners’ attention to language form either implicitlyor explicitly”. Ellis (1994, p. 639) distinguishes “instruction focused on form”, inwhich students’ attention is drawn to form while engaged in communicative tasks,from “instruction focused on forms” in which students study linguistic forms in thecontext of a structural syllabus.

Form-focused instruction resembles, in some ways, the discredited practices ofgrammatical explanations, presentation of rules, and grammar drills. However,DeKeyser (1995, as cited in Brown, 2000, p. 234) points to research suggesting thatFFI can be effective in improving learners’ production, especially when dealing withrules that are easily stated.




Consciousness-Raising (or Awareness-Raising)

It is described by Ellis (1994, p. 643-644) as aiming to help learners perceive andformulate cognitive representations of target language structures. It does notnecessarily require learners to produce target language forms but can be valuable inhelping them monitor their communicative output. Consciousness-raising isforward-looking; by helping students anticipate and monitor their errors, it opposesthe traditional practice of working backward from a “bloodstained”teacher-corrected text (Porte, 1993). By enabling students to predict, and then noticemistakes and errors, observes Porte, consciousness-raising shifts onto the studentsthe responsibility for checking and improving written work.

Form-focused instruction and consciousness-raising techniques can becombined in a variety of specific techniques. Among the most common are thefollowing:

• Elicitation, defined by Wright (1987, p. 70) as an instructional mode by which“teachers probe the learners through close questioning in order to bringpreviously acquired knowledge to the surface”.

• Selective error correction; that is, “correcting a limited number of languagestructures consistently and persistently over a period of time” (Mantello,1997). A variation of this technique is the Step-by-step approach in which adifferent kind of error is checked for each time a composition is read.

• Coded feedback involves indicating the location and the nature of errors, leavingit to students to do the actual correcting.

• Reformulation, a technique advocated by Cohen (1990, as cited in Mantello,1997), involves having a native L1 speaker rewrite a learner’s composition sothat errors of mechanics, grammar and vocabulary are corrected.

• Self-correction/checklists permit students to correct their own work using tablesthat enumerate (but do not explain) linguistic elements to be monitored.

• Peer review takes advantage of the public nature of writing and the noveltyinherent in having one’s work corrected by others.

• Error-Correction Games appeal to students who enjoy searching outdiscrepancies.

• Conferencing refers to personalized student-teacher discussions that aim tounderstand and treat writing difficulties. They have the double advantage ofproviding valuable information to teachers while permitting students to




explain and defend their work (Simpson, 2003). Lynch and Klemens (1978, ascited in Simpson, 2003) claim that error correction is ineffective unless it isdone in person.

• Collaborative writing involves forming small groups of students for generatingideas, gathering and organizing sources, peer reviewing, and mutual advising.

• Process writing is not so much a technique as a general approach that treatswriting as a process involving a progression of steps such as generation ofideas, elaboration of drafts, revision and reformulating. This approachemphasizes the distinction between product (the finished piece of writing) andthe process by which teachers assist writers to share, evaluate, and revise andtheir work through a cyclical series of steps (Gabrielatos, 2002). Simpson(2003) makes the important observation that “the teacher should refrain fromgiving a grade until the student has had a chance to revise” while Gabrielatos(2002) advises that feedback should focus on a limited number of elements soas to avoid confusing students.

All of these techniques lie along a continuum that places them nearer to, orfarther from, such traditional practices as grammar explanations, use of displayquestions, product writing, etc. But all of them actively involve learners in theerror-treatment process.

The Effectiveness of Error Treatment

Error treatment of ESL writing is a slow, uneven, and often frustrating process.Nevertheless, learner participative, awareness-raising techniques focused on carefullyselected errors can achieve immediate, quantifiable results, especially where simplystated linguistic rules can be invoked. In a study carried out at a Colombian university,ESL students were observed, after only two workshops, to begin conspicuouslydrawing periods at the ends of sentences (Giraldo & Perry, 2005).

Teachers worry – with good reason – that students will take all utterances notmarked with red ink to be correct, and perhaps even adopt these erroneousutterances as models. Such thinking needs to be reconsidered, seeing as the commonpractice of annotating all errors is prohibitively time consuming for teachers and ofdubious value to students (Mantello, 1997; Porte, 1993). Teachers, if they are not tobe overwhelmed, must devise procedures for focusing on selected errors whileconsciously ignoring others. Should teachers begin the error treatment process by




focusing on form (putting off for a time the correction of higher level errors) orvice-versa?

Attention to formal errors is open to criticism as a reversion to “traditional”methodology, with its fetish for formal correctness and disregard for“communication”. Yet if the aim is to improve students’ writing, does it not makesense to begin with those errors that most readily lend themselves to treatment?Though writing (like speaking) involves a variety of high order skills, it also calls forattention to mechanics and grammar, habits that, if not acquired early, mustnecessarily take up learners’ time and attention later.

This is not to say that error treatment should primarily concern itself with formalcorrectness, as though it were the most important aspect of writing. By treatingproblems of form at basic levels, teachers can help free students to focus more andmore on content as their writing skills evolve. A focused effort toward theimprovement of writing skills, in terms of both form and content, should be anintegral part of ESL instruction at all levels, including that of pre-graduate andpostgraduate language teacher education.

Conclusion

An informed, systematic approach to error treatment attempts to set students onthe long road to autonomy as writers. The aim is not to train students to correcterrors that teachers highlight for them, nor is it to improve their writing to the pointthat they no longer commit errors (an unrealistic goal even for L1 writers). Rather, itis to help students view writing as a constructive process involving much more thanthe consigning of ideas to paper, and to empower them to take charge of their ownrevision, self-monitoring and self-correction processes (Porte, 1993, p. 43).

ESL teaching and, in particular, the teaching of ESL writing, is seriouslyhandicapped to the extent that L1 literacy skills are underdeveloped. Not only dostudents tend to regard details such as punctuation and use of capital letters asunimportant, they often fail to detect mechanical errors even when directedspecifically to check for them. Though common sense suggests that time and effortinvested in improving native language skills is time stolen from foreign languagelearning, studies of children enrolled in bilingual programs in the United Statesdemonstrate that promoting native language proficiency facilitates the acquisition offoreign language skills (Cummins 1999).




That many common writing errors result from students’ failure to apply nativelanguage and English language concepts supposedly learned and re-learned in highschool suggests awareness-raising and form-focused techniques as promisingapproaches to treatment. That these techniques can be effective is demonstrated bythe phenomena of over-correction mentioned by Truscott (1999). Far from being, ashe assumes, undesirable consequences of error correction processes, they furnishproof of students’ newly acquired awareness.

Criticism that error treatment generates anger, frustration, or confusion withregard to EFL writing contradicts not only a considerable amount of SLA research butalso the experience of thousands of ESL teachers in diverse parts of the world.Students ask for correction and respond positively when it is given (Leki, as cited inMantello, 1997). Teachers must, of course, create positive, risk-friendly learningenvironments, encouraging students to take risks and to accept errors with patienceand humour. In this respect, “imported” teachers’ flawed proficiency in students’ L1and their willing acceptance of correction may be of great exemplary value in helpingstudents accept their own limitations and confront with confidence anddetermination the challenge of learning a second language.

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The Authors

María Cristina Giraldo holds a B.Ed. in modern languages from Universidad delQuindío and a master’s degree in TESOL from Universidad de Caldas. She has beenworking with English language learners for 29 years. Her research interests includesecond language literacy among Colombian English pre-service teachers and theapplication of new technologies to language teaching. She is currently an associateprofessor working with the English Language Teaching program at the UniversidadTecnológica de Pereira in Colombia.




Ronald Alan Perry holds a master’s degree in TESOL from Universidad de Caldas.He has taught English at bilingual schools in Manizales and Pereira and is currentlyan associate professor working with the English Language Teaching program at theUniversidad Tecnológica de Pereira. He wrote a course textbook on AnglophoneCivilization and has also published articles on African American English and foreignlanguage acquisition.




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